stone panels. The main entrance between them has a cast stone surround with keystone and denticulated cornice. Above them, large bronze letters spell out "UNITED STATES POST OFFICE PEARL RIVER NEW YORK 10965" in the entablature. Two flights of stone stairs and a wheelchair ramp to the west lead to the main entrance, a glazed modern aluminum door with large single-light transom above. It opens into a wooden vestibule. The lobby takes four of the five bays. It has terrazzo flooring, a tall ceramic tile dado and a foliate plaster cornice. Acoustic tiles cover the original plaster ceiling; modern fluorescent lighting and ceiling fans hang from them. The customer tables and grilles over the teller windows are also original. The teller windows themselves have been combined into one large service window. In the northwest corner is the postmaster's office; the rear of the building is given over to workspace. History Pearl River's first post office was established in 1872. For most of the rest of the 19th century, it was one of the few buildings in the center of the village on the New York and New Jersey Railroad, later part of the New York and Erie Railroad network. Suburban development began in the early 20th century. A 1931 amendment to the Public Buildings Act passed by Congress five years earlier authorized the construction of a new post office in Pearl River and many other communities, in order to relieve the economic hardship of the Great Depression. Work did not begin until 1935; it was completed the following year. As with many other post offices built at that time, the design was by Louis A. Simon, Treasury Department Supervising Architect. The Colonial Revival style used was also increasingly standard for post offices in smaller communities of that era. The basic form of the building, its wide central projecting pavilion and narrow wings, is shared by other post offices in New York, including those in Moravia and Watkins Glen. It differs from other post offices in that style and shape by reducing the former to essential elements. Without much decoration, it is identifiable as a Colonial Revival building through the basic symmetry of its arrangement of multi-paned windows and stone entrance surround. The flat roofs, absence of cornices and simple features of the main entrance suggest the influence of the Streamline Moderne and Art Deco movements of the time, which postal